Looking for Lessons
As the 2025 fantasy football season comes to a close, Reading the Defense is reviewing IDP performance by position for highlights and takeaways. Week 16's edition covered defensive linemen, focusing on edge defenders. Last week, the column unpacked the performances of 2025's top fantasy linebackers. The secondary is the subject of this last piece for the current season.
This column also concluded with defensive backs last year. A top IDP storyline in 2024 was the box safety's rebound. Safeties playing in predominantly MOFC structures occupied the top 13 spots on the fantasy leaderboard for defensive backs.
Deshon Elliott ranked among these 13 in his first year in Pittsburgh. For years prior, the Steelers had stubbornly deviated from the norm of a statistically productive strong safety. Despite their near-constant use of one-high coverages, their free safety, Minkah Fitzpatrick, was the playmaker in Pittsburgh's back end.
The Cream of the Crop
Elliott was seriously injured early in 2025. Meanwhile, the other MOFC team with a playmaking free safety finally delivered a valuable strong safety. Tampa Bay's Tykee Smith thrived in his first season as a starting safety. Smith might have led all fantasy defensive backs had he not been banged up in December. He still finished seventh overall and fifth in points per game.
Tykee Smith has been one of the best defenders on the Bucs this season.
— Evan Closky (@ECloskyWTSP) December 29, 2025
Here are a handful of plays as to why Bowles might have benched him.
Bowles said today Tykee was a bit banged up. https://t.co/muzSthsCpz pic.twitter.com/rDYEEZ1lYz
At first glance, 2025 was also a good year for box safeties. Elliott finished first with 11.9 points per game after exiting Week 5. Kam Curl of the Rams leads all defensive backs with 173.5 fantasy points by Footballguys scoring. Unlike last year, however, cornerbacks litter the top of the leaderboard.
In 2024, Jaylon Jones was the only outside corner among the top 30 scorers. He and his Colts simply couldn't get off the field last year. The team upgraded from him in 2025.
So far this year, seven cornerbacks who play outside more than half the time rank among the top 30 fantasy defensive backs. Chicago's Nahshon Wright and Houston's Kamari Lassiter are pacing the group and outperforming Jones's 2024 campaign on the strength of big plays.
Bangers Tamped Down
The upheaval on the leaderboard has less to do with cornerbacks' performances and more to do with top safeties, as a group, lagging their peers from 2024. Five safeties scored more than 173.5 fantasy points, Curl's current total, through Week 17 of 2024. The same was true in 2023.
Fourteen safeties and three nickelbacks had scored more than 150 fantasy points by this point in the 2024 season. Currently, just five safeties and the two aforementioned cornerbacks have cleared this threshold.
The reason for safeties' collective setback as fantasy scorers is how solo tackles have been recorded. Eighteen defensive backs had registered at least 60 solo tackles at this point last year. In 2023, 30 defensive backs had at least 60 solo tackles to their credit through 17 weeks. So far in 2025, just 8 players in NFL secondaries have 60 or more solos.
These year-over-year disparities are not a result of radically divergent safety roles; rather, the assignment of solo tackles by stat crews is a sea change altering IDP fantasy football. Twenty of the top 50 fantasy linebackers have registered more assists than solos in 2025. Just three had more assisted tackles than solo tackles last year.
A Statistical Sea Change
Continue reading this content with a ELITE subscription.
An ELITE subscription is required to access content for IDP (individual defensive players) leagues. If this league is not a IDP (individual defensive players) league, you can edit your leagues here.